The Israeli security cabinet approves Netanyahu’s plans to occupy the city of Gaza | International

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamín Netanyahu, has obtained the approval of the security cabinet to launch the occupation on Ciudad de Gaza. This has been confirmed by a statement from the president’s office in the early hours of Friday, more than 10 hours after the start of the meeting. The Israeli prime minister thus exceeds the rejection of the military dome and the streets, where concentrations have lived a rebound to the social opposition to an offensive that is perceived as potentially lethal for the captives who remain alive.

The statement confirmed by the new occupation leaves more doubts than certainties. The note does not resolve why the capture of Gaza’s city is announced when Netanyahu’s declared objective before entering the meeting was to get the approval to occupy the enclave as a whole. The text does not clarify whether to occupy that city is a previous step to move towards the rest of the territories where the army has no presence.

In any case, the approval of the security cabinet could make the expulsion of about one million Gazati civilians overcrowded in Gaza City imminent, according to the plans that Israeli media such as Channel 12 assured Thursday that Netanyahu has for that territory. If concretized, it would be a new mass eviction in a strip in which 90% of the population has had to move between bombs and debris, mostly on multiple occasions. The humanitarian sector provides catastrophic consequences, including an boom in civil deaths, if the army moves to the few territories where the population is piled up.

The escalation intends to empty territories where Israel believes that Hamas hides the captives to move the offensive there. The Prime Minister’s environment defends the expansion and justifies that it is necessary to rescue the 20 hostages that are believed to remain alive in the enclave. But both the army leader, Eyal Zamir, and the families of the kidnapped reject that idea and insist on their preference for an agreement that releases the hostages.

Tension with the army and with the families of the hostages

That friction is the one that has led thousands of Israelis concerned with captives to protest during Friday early. The concentrations have left the cut of some of the main avenues of Tel Aviv, the use of water cannons by the police and arrests. Many have concentrated before the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem.

The distance between the prime minister and the army leader was known. Before the meeting, Netanyahu confirmed to the press his willingness to occupy the whole of the Palestine Strip. “That is our intention,” he said: “(We will occupy the entire strip) to guarantee our security, to separate Hamas from there, and to allow the population to be free of Hamas,” he said to the microphones of the US chain Fox.

“Then,” said the prime minister, “we will pass (the strip) to a civil administration other than Hamas or anyone who defends the destruction of Israel.” Netanyahu did not enter the detail of who could be willing to take over to the Israeli occupation in the future, but mentioned the possibility that “Arab forces” govern the territory “properly.”

Shortly after, a Jordanian official in anonymity declared Reuters that Arab countries “will not accept Netanyahu’s policies or clean their disaster,” adding that they will only support “legitimate institutions” that “the Palestinians decide.”

Zamir expressed his disagreement with Netanyahu’s intentions. “Now we have the ability to maintain a new security border while we maintain pressure on the enemy,” he said Thursday at a meeting prior to the meeting of the security cabinet in an attempt to avoid climbing. And he was challenging: “The Army will continue to express its position without fear; we are dealing with matters of life or death.” The words of the Army Chief arrived days after the Netanyahu surroundings leaked that Zamir had to resign if he disagreed from Prime Minister’s plans to occupy the entire strip.

On Thursday night, before the approval of the expansion to Gaza City transcended, the Israeli troops launched multiple eviction orders against different areas of that city so that the population moved south “for their own security.”

The Israeli army currently controls 75% of the Palestinian enclave and considers 88% of the strip. Now, the expansion approved on Friday will take the troops apart from 12% of the remaining territory, where most of the two million gazaties are piled up in a situation of extreme weakness and helplessness.